[wetzler]

Totally strange. I did most of the negotiation with Dan, our CTO, though Kyle (my fiance) is the person who gave everyone the first verbal offers. I just updated the blog post to make that more clear.

I think in the end being friends made the negotiation much easier. I am confident we all wanted what was fair for the business and each individual, and were able to talk at length about that until everyone felt comfortable.

[alttab]

I too find it incredibly strange and most importantly dangerous.

1) You are intertwining your MARRIAGE with work. Rule #1 is don't shit where you eat.

2) You make matters worse because your husband is your boss. This will screw up the relationship dynamic, and that's not necessarily a guess, Im 99% certain it will be hard to separate, especially with longer start-up hours. Good luck, you'll need it.

3) You are putting all of your eggs in one basket. Sure its convienent, but if the start up fails, you are BOTH out of work.

4) Putting all of this on the company blog, with screenshots of e-mail correspondence and even prices is very strange, and either you don't know what you're compromising by doing this or it is a veiled attempt at advertising compensation packages on HN.

Generally, I don't think you or your husband's strategy will play well for either one of you in the long run. Others have said your finances will be joint, so why does it even matter what you get?

Seriously, this is really weird. I'm sure you're confident it will work, but I know first hand that mixing friendship (and in your case MARRIAGE, jesus) with work is dangerous and rarely ends well.

Good luck. My opinion is you both have made a very big mistake.

[wetzler]

I find your response to be a bit dramatic and troll-y, but you do raise some valid, common concerns which I will address now for the sake of others who might be curious:

[don't shit where you eat] If things start to get uncomfortable, for whatever reason, I can get another job. I'm smart enough not to be 100% confident things will work perfectly. However, I have lived with Kyle and the other founders for 8 years. We have a long and stable history.

[your husband is your boss] Kyle is a leader, but he's not my boss. We are a six person company and no one here has a boss. We treat each other as peers. So far it is working great. If we need to establish a hierarchy at some point, I trust we are capable of architecting it wisely. We are kind of obsessed with the organizational design of the company.

[two eggs, one basket] I'm not too worried about either of us being able to find a job. We have valuable skill sets which are in high demand. Plus, I have savings from my previous job.

[why did you blog this??] I put this on the blog because I thought it would be helpful to other people. It has received overwhelming appreciation.

Keen allowed it on the blog because we support a culture of transparency and because we think maintaining a blog that is useful to the tech community is helpful for our business. So far, it has worked very well.

[your finances will be joint, so why does it even matter what you get?] I'm offended by this question. I have always been the high earner in this relationship, and I still am. My salary matters a lot to me. The only way your question makes sense to me is if you think Kyle is rich (he's not), if you think he makes all the salary decisions in the company (he doesn't), or if you are speaking in the context of antiquated gender roles.

[you're weird] Thank you.

[alttab]

I'm sorry you feel I have "trolled" you. Not my intention. This was simply far enough away from what I normally encounter to justify voicing my opinion, not that my expectation would be that you would reconsider.

For clarification I never called you weird, ad hominem isn't really my thing.

And there is of course room for me to be completely wrong. I'm sure you're educated enough to avoid the most common pit-falls. It is simply my preference that given the opportunity, I wouldn't have made the same decisions.

Given the statistical risk of problems arising from this configuration, I can't imagine what the payoff would be that would justify the exposure.

[gjm11]

> You are intertwining your marriage with work. Rule #1 is don't shit where you eat.

If shit is a good metaphor for either the marriage or the job, then something was very badly wrong from well before this story began.

[dorkitude]

I'm sad to hear that you have enough bad experiences to constitute a statistically significant sample size. Or are you extrapolating from just one?

[alttab]

I'm basing it off every work relationship I've ever witnessed. not a huge set, but varied enough to form an educated opinion

[gadders]

Fair enough. Good luck to you both!